Amr Elssamadisy - Agile Adoption Patterns: A Roadmap to Organizational Success

In Agile Patterns: A Roadmap to Organizational Success, Amr Elssamadisy provides a clear and concise collection of patterns that will help you identify roadblocks in your organizations software development process and enable you to confidently make major improvements as you travel down the road to continuous and optimal process improvement.

Bob Bogetti
Software Manager, Baxter Healthcare Corporation

The subjects covered are comprehensive and easy to understand. Like the book says, there is no one size fits all for Agile. But the book offers the readers a buffet of practices and asks them to choose ones that apply to them. Even experienced Agile practitioners will find it useful, despite the authors preface. Its hubris to think you know it all and then get too comfortable. This book has reminded me about some key concepts that have fallen by the wayside in our own group. The concepts arent always easy to convey, but Amr does a great job of making them accessible. The examples are well thought out, and the sequence of subjects seems very natural. Id recommend it to anyone interested in Agile.

David Chia
Lead Engineer, BabyCenter

The hardest part about going agile is figuring out how to tease apart all those inter-dependent agile practices into bite-sized pieces you can try one at a time and figuring out which bites to take first. Lots of books out there describe what an agile team looks like, but getting from where you are to that point can be frustrating! Amrs wealth of experience coaching teams toward agility shines through as he guides you toward an adoption plan custom-built to fit your context. Amr doesnt just explain Agile practices, he explains how to think about those practices in an agile way, so you can avoid common pitfalls and create an adoption plan that works for you. This is a book Ive been waiting for someone to write for a long time and one Ill keep by my side when coaching new-to-Agile teams!

Ryan Cooper
Agile Coach/Developer

Amr has clearly spent considerable time down there in the messy everyday reality of software projects and come out all the wiser for it. In this book he describes an intelligent approach to Agile adoption where the focus is always on the customerdelivering business value. Amrs style is clear and direct, offering practical, down to earth advice and ideas to the ordinary development team member. If like me, youve struggled adopting Agile practices in your organization, Amrs perspective on the problem will help you to think through your situation constructively and find a better way forward.

Emily Bache
Software Developer

The collection of patterns in Amrs book is a useful reference in itself, but what I particularly appreciate is the presentation in , which suggests that Agile practices should be seen as a system, gives a concrete model of how they relate together, and advises that to find the proper order for adopting practices, one should first look at what the business needs to get more value or solve its problems.

Laurent Bossavit
Consultant, 2006 Gordon Pask Award Winner

Agile Adoption Patterns fills a gap that most people dont even realize exists. Process exists not for the sake of theoretical completeness, but to satisfy business goals. Amr will show you how to get your software development processes aligned with the business goals of your organization.

Ken DeLong
Chief Architect, Baby Center

I loved the idea of the book. I only wish I had this book two years ago, when I was a member of a team that had a particularly hard time during adoption of agile methodologies. The book is a pragmatic (and agile!) guide to adoption of Agile practices. The book offers different adoption strategies for different project environments and helps you to choose individual practices in such an order as to maximize the overall business value.

Dmitri Dolguikh
Agile Software Developer

Amr has done a great job with his book on adoption patterns. This book will help you if you believe Agile software development is what your projects need, but you are unsure about where to start and how to overcome cultural and technical barriers. If you have trouble articulating the bottom-line benefits to your peers and senior management, Amr explains in a straightforward manner how the resulting improvements percolate up to the business level. Read this book especially if you are interested in introducing test-driven practices into your organization: it gives a comprehensive picture of available variations together with what they are good for (and not good for) as well as a roadmap for gradually progressing to advanced levels. The narratives Amr provides to motivate the patterns covered are easy to relate to: youll quickly recognize whether a specific pattern is pertinent to your situation.

Hakan Erdogmus
Editor-in-Chief, IEEE Software

Agile Adoption Patterns is an excellent resource to help you find and tune the Agile practices that can make your project a great success.

Dave Hendrickson
Architect

Amrs fine book brings a unique, helpful approach to selecting which components of Agile you need to implement to fit your environment. Amrs work also details something many other books on Agile miss: a clearly defined business value for each of the components vital ammunition when youre trying to pitch new concepts to your management and customers!

Jim Holmes
Microsoft MVP, Quick Solutions, Inc.

This book outlines the steps and the structure for Agile adoption which I have not seen collected thoroughly in one material before. It helps find the path from why Agile all the way to measures of successful Agile adoption. I would recommend it for Agile adopters.

Yasser Helmi
Senior Developer, ThoughtWorks, Inc.

Amr is a true researcher on what it means to be Agile. Ive worked, debated, laughed, and waved my arms during many discussions over the years with Amr. He harbors a burning desire to find the essence of what it means to be truly Agile, and then to find a way to make that information available to each and every person involved in software development. In this book youll find some great things about the current state of successful software development and how you can do it better. I cant wait until I can get the final version of this book on my shelf so I can tear in to it!

Derek Lane
CTO/VP Development for Semantra, Inc.

Agile Adoption Patterns does a very effective job of communicating what it truly takes to adopt Agile in an organization. He understands that there is no one size fits all solution and therefore presents the reader with heuristic patterns (and smells) that can be matched up with their specific situation. And he doesnt just tell them how to do it, he insists on having the reader follow along, by answering questions and completing exercises, in order to select an adoption strategy that works for them.

Don McGreal
Director of Learning Solutions, Improving Enterprises Inc.

I know where it hurtsI just dont know how to fix it. That has been a complaint of mine for some time as I have worked to introduce lean thinking and agile practices to my development teams. With so many Agile practices to choose from, which ones should I focus on first, and which ones will be most effective at solving the real problems my teams are facing? Agile Adoption Patterns pulls together the best ideas of the Lean and Agile communities, giving you the entire landscape of available Agile practices, their relationship to each other, and their relative importance in contributing business value or eliminating undesirable smells from your teams. By breaking each Agile practice down into a standard pattern of adoption, this book provides you with a clean and simple roadmap for choosing which Agile practices to invest your time in. Not all Agile practices are created equal, so it is important to know which ones will truly solve your teams problems. Save yourself a lot of time and read this book. Youll be glad you did!